Patterns of plant species richness in relation to different environments: An appraisal

We review patterns of plant species richness with respect to variables related to resource availability and vari- ables that have direct physiological impact on plant growth or resource availability. This review suggests that there are a variety of patterns of species richness along environmental gradients reported in the literature. However, part of this diversity may be explained by the different types and lengths of gradients studied, and by the limited analysis applied to the data. To advance in understanding species richness pat- terns along environmental gradients, we emphasise the im- portance of: (1) using variables that are related to the growth of plants (latitudinal and altitudinal gradients have no direct process impact on plant growth); (2) using multivariate gra- dients, not single variables; (3) comparing patterns for dif- ferent life forms; and (4) testing for different shapes in the species richness response (not only linear) and for interaction between variables.

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